1. Field
The following description relates to a search technology, and more particularly, to an apparatus and method to generate a community index based on a topic and an apparatus and method to search for a community based on a topic.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, a network is represented by a number of nodes, and relationships between these nodes are represented via edges. A community refers to a sub-network that is closely connected to a main network, and the number of communities, a size of a community and a relationship between communities defines the network.
With the recent growing interest in social networking, typified by Twitter and Facebook, as platforms for people to share their interests and information, these websites have remarkably increased their influence on politics, culture, and economics. Hence, a variety of services that utilize community information have been developed and, accordingly, the importance of the community search has been increasingly emphasized. For example, a search may be conducted for a community related to a specific disease or a specific patient from a social network. For example, ‘PatientLikeMe’ is a community for patients suffering from different types of diseases, in which it may be possible to analyze a tendency of disease and a relationship between diseases, to search for suspected cases by use of community information, and to thereby manage diseases.
However, as the network becomes vaster and more complex, the existing search technology has limited capability to effectively search for a community. Thus, there is a need for an apparatus and method to more accurately, automatically, and effectively search for a community.